Mentors Tips - What's your WikiTree "Add" Style?

Question

This is a partial re-post of an older Mentors Tips as questions have come up about sourcing and how we address people who have different add styles...

 

Slow and Methodical -
Some WikiTreers add profiles one at a time, methodically adding sources, while searching for and adding more sources as they find them.  That's my style - I am slow and methodical (I admit I may take a long time to come back around to working up bio's).

Fast and Furious -
Some WikiTreers add profiles while working from a source, adding many, many profiles as they work down the source.  They create the citation for the source on one profile, copy it, then go back to each profile they made and paste the source to the profile.  After that and possibly over a few days or even weeks they may go back over the profiles and add Bios...

Which ever way you work, always include in your style, time to carefully look for matches to make sure you don't create duplicates to our great big ole tree.

Profiles on Wikitree  <--- look this over about profiles on Wikitree.

So today, as you work and add profiles, and you aren't adding a source for your information...

• Be sure to come back around to source what you have done because it is important in a collaborative community.
   
• Please DO leave the unsourced template on profiles for which you have not placed a source (you can not be a source about something or someone who did not live and interact with you in your life time) this way if a source never gets added, eventually someone will source the profile.
   
• If you are working from a Family History, someone in the family has given you? Create a citation for it like this where I identify where I got it - Frances T. Gaulden, The Title of the Family History - Clan of Comptons. Author, date and publisher AND where it can be found:
  
  * Personal papers and notes of Frances T. Gaulden, Clan of Comptons, p. , Myldred Compton Lankford, February 15, 1974, Unpublished. Personal copy in the files of M. Gaulden
  
  We all follow each other in our work, so if someone ends up on one of the profiles that uses this family source, I can go back to the source to answer a question. This is an important thing to do in collaboration.
   
• Be patient with others Add Styles. WikiTree is and will be a well-sourced world family tree...one profile at a time...whether it's done slowly? Well that depends on your add style.
  
  Mags

Comments

I do think there is a difference between the person with 10-15 unsourced profiles created in a day, and the person who has created 50+ unsourced profiles over a 5 day period of time.

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I don't think there is at that level Robin. Currently I am working with an Adoptee. I have found her birth family, but not her nulcear birth family. I also found the family Historian/Genealogist for her birth family and she is helping to identify who the nuclear family might be. I have found her research to be bang on.

We are working at a feverish pace because the adoptee is 88 or 89 years old and because endogamy in this family is on a scale I have never seen before - so trying to tie it all down is imperative. I have been entering information and posting," Family information from JS, or ST" as the source. For some I have had to find connections so I have done the extra research in the moment and posted sources and citations. But - there are a ton that I have yet to go back to source - and I will, we will all have to trust that I have good intentions.

Does this mean that the 50 or 100 I added on that day will cause me to get a message from another WikiTreer to stop what I am doing and go back, right this minute and add sources? It could. If it did, I would let the WikiTreer know that I will be getting back round to sourcing these profiles, not now but when I can take a break. Or when we finally have our breakthrough.

I think someone working furiously through a Family History or Book or whatever, might post well over a hundred in a day without the source. BUT, leaving the unsourced template on the profile will keep the profiles that aren't gotten back round to on our Sourcerers radar.

Which is my point. If someone, anyone, you, have a fast and furious add style - Please leave the Unsourced Template on the profile until you have a source citation to add. If you notice someone working for days and days and adding 100's and 100's of profiles a day without sources and removing the unsourced template, then drop them a note and ask them to look at this post, so they understand what it is that may need to/should be done. And assume that whoever it is has good intentions, like me. Mags

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Greetings, 

Can someone please define "Nuclear Birth Family?"  Referring to comment above, first paragraph dated May 17, 2016.

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Hey Paula - I was referring to her very close family - mother, father, brothers and sisters. As an update to this - I did find her Father and all of her deceased and one living sibling - her nuclear family.

Answer 1

Actually I work a somewhat intermediate style.  I'm working from my own trees which are in Family TreeMaker.  At the moment I'm working from a 25 page outline descendent report for my 3ggrandfather William Miller.  I'm working down it from the top and adding each individual not already entered concentrating on adding censuses, both those I've already added copies of to the tree and some times adding ones I hadn't added before.  Since I'm not taking the time to find the citation in Ancestry.com or in FamilySearch, I just add a boilerplate message that they come from Ancestry.com  I plan to add additional sources when I get done entering all of them and probably find the actual citation (since I don't like the numbers Ancestry.com has and I give census year, state, county, city or township and the ward, district and page.  I figure that would be easier to find for a person not subscribed to Ancestry.com.  I don't go to the trouble of transcribing the census page(s) since I add the census to all people listed in it anyway.

Answer 2

I'm typically the fast and furious sort. If I find a good resource, like a good ol' book, I'll go through the resource and create a quick mini bio (person's name, birthday, birth place, parents, marriage (if applicable), death date and place (if known)) and add the source, and then go on to make the next profile.

Answer 3

I will be the first one to admit, I am not a "style" person.   But, if I do not put at least one source on a profile when I create it....I have trouble going back and figuring out "why I thought that person belonged in the tree at all".

When I find a source that covers many people, I create the "reference" to the source in my scratch pad on my Navigation Page, or just in a word document, then I can just cut and paste the source as I go through the profiles where it applies.

For me....the whole reason I know that I can add a person is some source I have found....so, I add it when I create the person.

Answer 4

My style is to dig into all the relationships first, trying to find connections up and down the tree from where I started.  Very often I find the profiles I need are already here but not connected to the person I started researching, so then it becomes a matter of editing existing profiles instead of entering new ones.  

Once I do find them, I tend to work in Husband/Wife pairs, as many of the records will apply to both.

Answer 5

I'm a differently-fast-and-furious style, since I like to go to FamilySearch (and other complementary databases) and add as much information from all the sources I can find as I go. But, I haven't made many of my added profiles "article style" yet.